On Movement is a series of exhibitions hosted by Burrow, a Berlin based graphic design studio. The intention of the series is to engage the temporarily empty studio space inviting artists to present their take on the concept of movement.

Burrow is proud to presents Francisco Regalado and Benjamin Skop, the first two artists in the exhibition series On Movement.

For this exhibition, the two artists respectively present the viewer with interpretations of the deconstruction of movement. Whereas Benjamin Skop presents a study of the abstraction of the human body into a self-developed movement classification system RAAP (Right Angled Arm Positions), Francisco Regalado’s work relies heavily on digital tools to translate the approximately 0.70-second movement of a skateboard in space into a physically manifested sculpture on the gallery floor.

Curated by Yolandé Gouws

Francisco Regalado
(b. Mexico City, 1990)

Francisco’s work is perpetual research informed by the interrelationships between natural and computational processes: he strives to unveil embedded forces in natural systems through man made systems.

Francisco received a degree in architecture at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City where he was subsequently an assistant tutor for the studio “Emergent Material Systems”. His professional experience includes studios in Mexico City, London, Stockholm and Berlin.

Currently, he lives and works in Berlin where he recently concluded studying advanced geometries at Studio Olafur Eliasson. He is a candidate for a Masters in Digital Fabrication at the ETH in Zurich: a program organised by the Chair for Digital Building Technologies.

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It was Galileo who proved that the trajectory of any object being thrown is what we call a parabola. With this as his starting point and driven by an insatiable curiosity for forms created by the laws of nature, Francisco Regalado has set out to materialise a collection of immaterial curves generated as a result of various forces acting simultaneously on a plane, in this case, a skate deck.

As a skater performs a flat ground flip trick, their body is in command of a moving plane and, using rules beyond their understanding, create an approximately 0.70-second trick that is impossible for the viewer to understand at once. By creating a precise set of impulses on strategic positions on the board a movement is initiated, everything that happens consequently is ruled by time and gravity.

Using custom made tools, both digital and analog, Francisco translates the invisible trajectories followed by two points on the deck from the virtual, to the digital, to the physical. Sculptures at scale 1:1, video at 1:2 and drawings at 1:10 make the ephemeral tangible.

The research shown in this exhibition forms part of a larger archive of a series of space curves produced by a controlled set of forces. The future aim of this project is to have such curves studied in its most natural environment, the city.

Benjamin Skop
(b. Copenhagen, 1993)

Benjamin Skop is an artist working with human movement as his primary interest. He is concerned with its nature, meaning and its relation and interconnection with its surroundings.

Skop’s professional dance career saw him perform in many of the most significant theatres around Denmark, as well as in Sweden, England, China and France. After ten years of dance and theatre work, Skop shifted his knowledge and understanding of the body and movement into the field of visual arts.

Through continuous experimentation with various mediums including photography, video, motion capture and 3D technology, Skop explores new ways for corporeal movement to be performed, understood, represented and expanded upon.

Skop is deeply fascinated by human movement in its broadest sense and poses questions like
What is human movement and how is it perceived? Can we expand upon our perception of human movement? How does this relate to ideas about time and space? Are visualization-methods fundamentally of an objective or subjective nature?

Benjamin Skop is currently undertaking a BFA at the Glasgow School of Art.

We move our bodies knowingly and unknowingly. We trace complex lines through the air with our fingertips, our hips, our eyes. Oscar Schlemmer termed the naturally formed curves we draw ‘movement mathematics’ (1961: 23) and Henri Bergson philosophised about the indivisibility of movement (1992: 165).

Unsurprisingly, we seldomly take a moment to appreciate the geometries continuously and naturally formed by our bodies, since these lines are invisible.

Taking body geometry and movement as a starting point, Benjamin Skop explores the human body’s geometry and it’s embedded movement abilities for his artistic exploration. Benjamin’s career as a dancer saw him test the extents of his own body’s movement capabilities and led him to explore the effects of rules applied to movement.

For this exhibition, Benjamin presents the viewer with three video works all based on a movement categorization system, RAAP (Right Angle Arm Positions), that he has been developing for the past years. The movements studied are strictly confined to the arms and only 90 degree angles are used. Calculated are 225 variations put into an alphabetical system and language. These two simple rules, along with their custom classification system, are demonstrated in a video work upstairs. Downstairs, two interpretive RAAP video works are shown.